Last Saturday, a group of 9 of SUWPC’s finest men travelled to Basingstoke for
the annual Lady Richmond Brown tournament. With last year’s winning (and
battered to within a millimeter of falling apart!) trophy in the car, the boys
were anxious to continue SUWPC’s success at the tournament. Unfortunately, with
exams and put-off revision looming, the usual first team was left severely
undermanned. Luckily, several of the 2nd’s were able to fill the void, and
avoid us turning up with no subs and two keepers.

The 3 teams we faced are well known to us, and we knew that we’d have a tough
time: Basingstoke, Portsmouth and Southampton City. With the games 2 halfs of
8 minutes stopping clock, with no timeouts allowed for a cheeky rest, it was
going to be a long, tiring day!

First up for us were Basingstoke. Unfortunately, lacking the usual suspects
from the 1st team proved hard to overcome, and the 1st quarter can only be
described as a nightmare! Basingstoke were able to score 8 unanswered goals,
with the only marks on our side of the match sheet being 2 majors. At half
time, we regrouped, and the second half was much better, started off with a
pit-goal from the biggest Ben in the club, “BBB” Ben Kinsley-Smith to open our
tally. Sadly, further goals from Will “DIEvall” Divall and Paul “Biggest
Circuits Boy” Heerema couldn’t do much to counter the 6 extra goals from
Basingstoke, with the final score a disappointing 14-4 loss.

The second game against Portsmouth seemed to follow the same pattern of the
first, despite Josh “Massive(ly shit chat)” Rowland’s opening goal, the first
half was again host to us getting destroyed, with 8 being put in past BBB. The
second half featured the more masculine(?) half of Ramy who was on fire in and
out of goal, putting two away, to take the lead in the BBB keeper/pitch
player-off. Another 3 goals from Pompy left the final score at 11-3.

Our final game was started only 10 minutes after the end our previous, leaving
all of us knackered, and feeling super-excited about playing another game. Some
took it worse than others though, Mitchell “Pitchell” clearly missing the encouragement
of his better half, Piers. TJ James Pipe valiantly stepped up for the swim off,
narrowly losing to City’s player. However, it was again more of the same, even
with 3 Dievall goals and a pair of Lefty specials, we were still behind City’s
more experienced and fresher team. The most shocking goal of the tournament
came in the final minutes of the second half, when Pete “ShitSec” Austin
decided that he could in fact throw a polo ball, and managed to sneak it over
the unsuspecting keeper’s hand to take one more for Soton. The final score was
13-6 to City.

The drive home featured some dubious off-roading to escape the
clutches of Blazingstoke’s finest eatery, McDonald’s and some excellent
undertaking on the M3 to keep the drivers on their toes. Final mention goes to
TJ, for being (easily) persuaded that attempting a fellowship in the Hobbit was
a good idea, seeing off 6/10 pints before finally submitting. Hopefully with
some new-season training and getting used to a lack of Malakas, next year’s
games will be more contested on our behalf, with a much more serious chance of
winning. Summer training needs to start now!

Goals:
5 – Will Divall
3 – Josh Rowland
2 – Robin Liquorice
1 – Pete Austin
1 – Paul Heerema
1 – Ben Kingsley-Smith

Majors:
5 – Josh Rowland
2 – Ben Kingsley-Smith
1 – Pete Austin
1 – Will Divall
1 – Paul Heerema
1 – Owen Stephens